The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence

This podcast is brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.

How can you create meaningful connections with people who can impact you, your life, and the things you care about? How do you create a sense of community, a feeling of belonging, and become a person of influence? Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, and welcome to Actionable Intelligence. My guest today is John Levy. John is a behavioral scientist best known for his work in influence, human connection, and decision-making. He's also the author of a great book called You're Invited: The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence. In today's conversation, we discuss how to create deep and meaningful connections with anyone regardless of their stature or celebrity. You'll learn how to develop influence, gain trust, and build community so that you can achieve what's important to you and benefit those around you. So let's get started with Jon Levy. Where I'd like to start is more than a decade ago, you started what you call the Influencer's Dinner, and I think this is a fascinating story. So I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about how did it start, what is it, what were you hoping to accomplish with it?

Oh, sure. So it's kind of funny, I was 28 or so, you know, I was out of college and pretty heavily in debt from it. I was working, but I was clearly underemployed and I was overweight. And I was trying to figure out how to like shake things up and really get my career on the path that I wanted to be on. And I kept reading like every self-help book and personal development, you know, guru out there, like reading their stuff. And life was improving, but not at the kind of rate that I was hoping for. I'd mostly spend my mornings beating myself up for hitting snooze and skipping the gym. And I came across this study by these two guys, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, and they were looking at the spread of habits, right? So obesity, happiness, marriage and divorce rates, smoking habits, all these things. And what they found specifically around obesity was that if you have a friend who's obese, your chances increase by about 45% your friends who don't even know this person have a 20% increased chance, and their friends have a 5% increased chance. So people completely unconnected directly are affecting one another. And that habit is true for just about anything that we do. And so I got really curious, maybe instead of just setting an alarm for 6:00 AM and trying to go to the gym, maybe I could figure out how to befriend people who are really fit. And really successful and so on, so that their habits would naturally just be part of my lifestyle. I'd get better at saving and better at exercise and all these things. And the biggest thing I realized was that it's not just important for me to know them, but if I connect them to each other, everybody would positively impact one another. So I spent about the next year researching kind of the interests and and what affects highly influential people, people who have an ability to impact an industry, thought leaders, CEOs, celebrities, executives, all these people. And from my research, I created a secret dining experience. 12 people are invited. They're not even allowed to talk about what they do or even give their last name. And when they sit down to eat, we actually play a game to guess what everybody does. And that's when they find out that it's the CEO of a big company, the editor-in-chief of a magazine, a Nobel laureate, an Olympic medalist, a celebrity, you know, all these kinds of major industry leaders. And I've hosted at this point 232 dinners in 10 cities and 3 countries. And it's developed into this kind of wild community.

And how often do the people accurately guess the profession of the person who's there?

Oh, never. Here's the funny thing. The people say stuff like, "I think you're an artist," and the person will say, "Oh, I'm an architect," and they're like, "Oh, I see an artist," right? Like, they'll shoehorn things in, like, to make it sound— so occasionally, like, the people who are, you know, somebody walks in and he's 6'5" and 270 pounds, you're like, "That guy's an athlete," right? There's human beings that large tend to go into sports. But aside from that, it's really, really tough to guess.

Yep. Well, what I love about what you did with the influencers dinner, and then you actually wrote a book called You're Invited, and we'll definitely be talking about a lot of the concepts that you have in your book. But this idea of influence and how you were able to connect with people and get those people to then connect with themselves and get people together that you didn't know that were highly influential, that were super successful, yet they wanted to come to these dinners and meet these other people. So, you over time ended up coming up with, I'll call it a methodology or framework or some insights in how you made all that happen. And I think that is really applicable to most of the folks who are listening to this, many of whom are financial professionals, in terms of how do we meet these people? How do we connect with them? How do we build trust? So, let's dig into that here a little bit deeper. And you've done developed what you call the Influence Equation. So tell me, what is the Influence Equation?

Influence Equation essentially demonstrates the relationship between 3 characteristics. And I want to be clear, when I say influence, I don't mean like having a large social media following and taking photos of avocado toast, right? That is building an audience, and that's an amazing skill. It's just very different than Influence is the ability to have an impact on a person or an outcome. Most of the influence we care about has nothing to do with having an audience. Most of the influence we care about are things like getting a client to agree to a contract, or our boss to take our ideas seriously, or our kids to eat healthy. And those things break down to what I'd say are 3 factors: who you're connected to, because if you're not connected to somebody, it's hard to influence them. The second is how much they trust you, because nobody's going to opt in to be influenced by you if they think you're a crook or a liar or something. And then the third is the sense of belonging that you share. You'll notice that when you're part of a community, things spread much more easily through that community than if it's a bunch of disparate individuals. And so if you can become an expert at connection, trust, and belonging or community, then the only limitation on your influence is what you want to apply it for.

And I love how you've distilled that down into those three things, and we're really going to drill into that here. But I want to ask you about when it comes to connection, and let's talk about the pandemic. How has our desire as humans to connect either changed or not changed as a result of the pandemic? What are you seeing at this point?

I've been seeing that the pandemic is accelerating a trend in our society in general, that we're lonelier and more disconnected than ever. So in 1985, a study was launched asking people, how many friends do you have besides family? And the researchers discovered that it's just about 3. 19 years later in 2004, it was repeated and the answer was just about 2, which means that in less than a generation we lost a third of our social ties. And that trend has clearly continued. Now, that early loss of friendship was probably more due to people moving, because every time you move then you lose touch with the people that you were around and the people that you knew. But the big concern is that when you look at the greatest predictors of, you know, human longevity, It's your relationships and your social ties. If you look at team success, you can measure it essentially to a level of trust, right? So company stock value, employee sick days, and profitability are all predicated on the level of trust at an organization. And if we're lonelier than ever, then that means that trust and belonging is lower than ever. And so I think the big trend is that people have a real need to connect now more than ever, right? So if you're in sales or something like that, people actually do want to connect. They just want to do it in a way that feels really natural.

And now that we've had coming up on 2 years here of the pandemic and a lot of people trying to operate virtually, what have you seen in terms of humans' ability to connect over a screen like you and I are over the screen here? But tell me a little bit about maybe the difference in a connection that's just built over virtual versus a connection that's in person? Are there some benefits to the virtual connection that maybe we don't have in the in-person? And what do you see happening there?

So I think that there's— we can split it up into kind of 2 or 3 different aspects, right? In terms of— there's this thing called the Allen curve, which is that you can measure communication between 2 people at an office based on how far their desks are. So the closer your desks are, you get an exponential growth in how often you communicate. Now, what the pandemic did was it made everybody's desks equally distant, right? Me connecting with you and me connecting with somebody in China or me connecting with somebody in California is essentially equally available as long as we're awake. So the benefit is that we've put people on kind of a, let's say, generally even playing ground. Which means that whereas previously you may have limited yourself to doing business or connecting with people locally, it doesn't really matter where your potential customers are. The other benefit is that we're now seeing into people's homes. So whereas before, when I met you, I'd kind of maybe judge you on your outfit, we may have all been wearing the same thing like a suit and shirt or whatever it is. Now I get to see the lovely art in your background and the photo of your family, and I get to ask about them. And suddenly we have this insight into people's lives. Their kids run in, their dog, and you get to meet their pet. And so there are definite benefits to that because it allows us an opportunity to humanize people. The key is actually taking it. The problem in general is not necessarily on the individual level, although that's a big problem. It's twofold. One is trust is really hard to build at distance. Our cues for trust are generally occurring in person. There's side conversations and helping each other out and picking up some papers that somebody drops. Those opportunities don't exist digitally in the same way, at least not yet. The other is, Steve, have you ever been to a concert?

Of course.

Or have you ever been to like a football game or a soccer match? Or of course, Green Bay area, so you've probably seen the Packers play.

Go Packers!

Is it different watching the game in person versus on the screen?

Oh, for sure.

Why is that?

Well, when you're in person, you have all the energy of the stadium and all the people there 60,000, 70,000, 80,000 people all cheering on in one direction when you're at Lambeau Field, for example. Just the energy and excitement and the history of being in the stadium and everything that's taken place there and what's taking place in real time, yeah, that is definitely different than sitting in front of my TV eating some popcorn.

Yeah. I think you're pointing to something interesting. When the pandemic hit, every company took their in-person experiences and then put them online. And it was amazing, mostly how bad it was. I mean, like, now I'm not just talking like image quality and all that, like these platforms have evolved a lot in the past 2 years. What I'm talking about is you'd be sitting there on an 800-person WebEx hearing a keynote and wondering like, why am I listening to this? I'm going to go wash my dishes. And so we What we see is that there's something intrinsic about being somewhere in person, like at a conference, that just isn't provided digitally. And I'd argue that in the most simple version of this, there are 3 things. We come to be entertained and enlightened, right? To watch the game or hear the concert or hear the talk. But then we also come because of the potential or experience of human connection. Being part of that crowd, we can feel the crowd, we can connect with people, we can talk to people, we can give them a little head nod, we can cheer together, we feel we belong. And then the third characteristic is that we feel that we matter, we have an influence. When I scream, I can shout, I can dance, I can sing, I can boo, I have an impact on the people around me. And that is rarely applied digitally. People aren't using breakout rooms so that people can have conversations at conferences, it's just talk after talk after talk, and you're sitting there like a mindless drone absorbing information. Or more likely, you're answering emails because you feel like you don't matter. If you're at the tail end of a WebEx, you can keel over and die and nobody cares. And so I think that just to now answer your question, what digital offers is the potential to connect on a more intimate level when you can see into people's homes. Rarely do people use that, right? And it also gives us distance. But what it generally doesn't make up for is, especially at scale, is meaningful connection and giving people a sense of influence and that they matter.

When the pandemic hit, how did you adjust your influencer dinners, or how did you adjust the work that you do? Since I'm thinking so much of it was about being in person, was about the experience, How did you adjust to the virtual world?

It's interesting. We tested out a lot of stuff. The first assumption we have is that we don't know what we're doing and let's practice different ideas and see what people respond to. And I don't think we've quote unquote figured it out, right? I think we've done a lot of things really well. And the first rule we created was we're not doing any dinners. We're not going to do a lift and shift. I'm not going to try and cook with people over Zoom. No, thank you. What I can do is use the fact that we are at distance and that we can reach the entire community across the country or across the world simultaneously. So we started digital salons, and we knew that it wasn't just enough to entertain and enlighten people. We needed to give them that connection and that sense of influence. So we made a general rule: 50% of each experience had to be in breakout rooms so they can get to know each other. It's not about me. I don't want to be on camera. I don't want to speak. So when people arrived at our digital salons, the first thing we did was we put them into small breakout rooms so that the introverts felt safe and gave them a topic of conversation. Then we'd present two speakers, 10 minutes each, keep it super short, with 2 minutes of Q&A. So like a question or two. And then we realized that we need interactivity. So we created a game show for each event. And sometimes we created a game called like Greek or Hip Hop. And we'd have Nia Vardalos from My Big Fat Greek Wedding compete against Roy Wood Jr. from The Daily Show. And about if a phrase was Greek wisdom or hip hop lyrics. And everybody could play along on polls if they think it's Greek or hip hop. So it made this really unique novel experience. That was fully interactive and playful. And then we'd do like a show or something like that to follow where a nonprofit would speak. Then we started doing the game shows as breakout rooms. For 15 minutes, people would compete to answer trivia or puzzles or whatever it was, and then they'd get to hang out once they were done and get to know each other. So it really bonded them. I think that that's where we've shown was that we were able to take hundreds and hundreds of people and make them feel like they were having a really intimate experience.

And these digital salons, you're saying there were hundreds of people that were in these?

Oh, we were like, the most we had was 200 and the longest it lasted was 5 hours. I initially thought it was going to be like 90 minutes, but people did not want to log off. I mean, especially in the midst of all the riots and George Floyd and everything that happened, people really felt a need to to belong.

And when you put people in the breakout rooms, did you just randomly assign them, like 5 people in a breakout room, and the system randomly put people together?

Yeah, here's my general view: if you've curated well, people will connect and engage, especially if you give them an activity to do. There's this concept I really work with called the IKEA effect. It's one of the characteristics of how to build trust. It's that human beings build trust through shared effort. Like the reason we care about our IKEA furniture more is that we have to assemble it. And so if I can get people to work together through a game or activity in a breakout room, they'll begin to care about one another, and that will foster more community.

Yeah, well, that's a great segue because I, I want to talk about the second part of your equation here, which is the trust piece. So you said one way to build trust is this IKEA effect, to get people to like work together toward a common goal. Obviously, everyone that's listening to this, we're all in the business of trust in one way or another, whether it— our business is about building trust with our clients or whether it's with our relationships, it's building trust. So everything is about trust. Let's talk about in the business environment, what are some ways that you've discovered that people can build trust? And can we build trust quickly, or is it really a function of time to build the trust?

So in general, trust increases over time, right? It's just the nature of the game, because trust is generally built through small actions, not anything grandiose. The big problem is that everything we tend to do to build trust, we either do wrong or backwards. So I'll give an example. Have you ever been to a business dinner? Like, somebody's trying to pitch you business, they take you out to dinner. More often than not, I don't know if you've had the same experience, they're not particularly enjoyable experiences. They're kind of awkward. You don't know what to talk to these people about. You feel obligated to be there because they're paying for a meal. You know that they're just pitching you on business. It's not like an actual connection. And so it doesn't feel natural, right? The other thing is you'll get invited to an event and they'll give you like a swag bag with their company t-shirt on it as if what you suddenly want to do is wear their company t-shirt. None of that really works. In fact, it's near impossible to win people over with gifts. There's an exception, which is, let's say you're— it's pretty obvious you're a Packers fan. If I get you a signed, worn, original jersey of your favorite player, then you'll say, wow, John really gets what I care about. But other than that, it's really tough and that doesn't scale well. So The first thing is to realize that relationships are built through shared effort. So Steve, what's a sport you really enjoy playing?

Basketball.

Okay, great. So we are better off playing basketball together, hopefully on the same team, and sweating and going through a bit of pain than we are going out to a dinner. And the reason is multifold. One is that IKEA effect kicks in, right? The second is that it's something you actually enjoy. And an activity fills the awkwardness of not knowing what to talk about. So if we're playing basketball, we can talk a little, and then if we run— a conversation reaches a lull, then you're just playing and it's not a big deal. So I encourage people going on hikes, doing art classes, doing something specifically that's more novel, right? Something that actually sounds fun and interesting. Like, you know, taking a cocktail-making class side by side, it's going to be a lot more appealing for people saying yes than, hey, let's go for meet for coffee. So that's the kind of like the biggest, easiest lift recommendation.

Yeah, so we want to really try and connect with people that have, say, a common interest, whether it's a hobby or some outside passion. So I know in your book You mentioned that we should stop taking clients out for expensive dinners and instead find a joint activity like a hike, a fitness class, an art project, volunteer work, or even flower arrangement. The key is that it is something that will cause you to invest effort together and ideally is consistent with what you enjoy and value. So just reinforcing what you just said here a moment ago about that shared common interest. And I think about the basketball example. I may not know somebody, but if they're on my team and I pass them the ball and they make a basket, we're going to high-five each other as we're going back on the defense.

So now suddenly it becomes you versus everyone else, right? Now you're like the team. Now you can have team pride. It could be trivia games, right? Like, whatever it is, it produces a playful and fun environment to connect. And the other important factor is that there's this misconception that trust precedes vulnerability. It's actually the other way around. It's that vulnerability precedes trust. And this is called a vulnerability loop. So Steve, we're catching up and I turn to you and I say, oh my God, Steve, my cat is driving me up the wall. I'm going crazy. She's waking me up at night. I have a great cat and she doesn't do any of this. But in that moment, you could make fun of me. Oh, John, you're just being weak. Get over it. Or you can acknowledge that I've just been vulnerable with you and respond with, "Hey, I know how you feel. I've had pets for years and, you know, one of my wife's favorite, you know, dog or whatever used to drive us crazy." In that moment, we both demonstrated that we could be vulnerable with each other and that we're safe. And so it's a predictable process. Person 1 signals vulnerability, person 2 acknowledges it, signals their own vulnerability, And then person 1 acknowledges it. And when that happens, that's how trust is built. And when you're on a team and you have a time-locked activity, then suddenly those vulnerability loops happen very quickly. I'm going in for a shot and I see I can't make it, so I pass it to you and you quickly grab the ball. And suddenly, like, you've saved the day. And so that vulnerability loop was complete. And if we can open and close those loops quickly, then trust increases.

And going back to your influencer dinners, did you build in vulnerability into those, or did they just naturally happen?

I built in this idea of the IKEA effect. I didn't understand why it worked. And I think a lot of the reason the IKEA effect works is these vulnerability loops. It's that I put people in the situation where they have to cook an entire meal in a really short period of time. And as a byproduct, it forces people to open and close these loops quickly. And that you can do with anything. We've had experiences where people do flower arranging. We've had experiences where people have to build water filters in order to, quote unquote, survive and get clean water. And consistently what happens is that people feel really close to each other. After. That's fantastic. Like, seeing trust build that quickly is incredible.

And something else that you also wrote in your book as it relates to building trust is you said, quote, people often think trust develops from grandiose actions like saving someone's life, throwing a surprise party, or giving a large gift. But research has shown that it is more a byproduct of micro actions that demonstrate care and belonging— things like asking about their children by name, remembering a birthday or a well-placed insightful compliment. So I think that's another great insight here as well is just these micro actions. Anything that you wanna elaborate on that?

Sure. So it's kind of funny. This is how friendships traditionally built, right? Do you have any kids, Steve?

I do, 3.

Okay, so you go to pick up your kids from school, you see another parent and you say, oh, how's such and such project going? How's your mom doing? Right? Stuff like that. 'And that's a vulnerability. You put yourself out there. You could have made a mistake in the comment.' And they go, 'Oh, wow. Yeah, she's doing great.' But the fact that you remembered that makes somebody feel special. You've just given them a cue for belonging. As a byproduct, trust generally increases. If we're not intentional about things, that takes a long time to build up. If we are intentional about them through being aware of creating vulnerability loops or closing them and so on, or through developing trust through activities or this IKEA effect, then we can do it much faster.

One of the things that we teach in our industry is that you want to try and understand and find out as much as you can about your clients and potential clients. And it's a lot of these things like their birthdays, their anniversaries, those sorts of types of personal information. And then we're going to put that information in a CRM system. So we're going to be able to track it. And then if we have our client coming into the office that day, or we're going to meet with them, we may refresh ourself with what we have in our database so that when we meet with them, we can talk about these personal things. Or when their birthday comes up, we've got a system to recognize them for their birthday. Now that's all systematized and organized. Is there any difference between being methodical like that, if you're genuine, as opposed to let's just do that because I heard on a podcast that I'm supposed to do this for someone and that's going to help me develop trust?

So I think that there's two aspects to this. One is doing these things methodically probably does help, right? But there is a real important factor when we look at trust, and that's what trust is made out of. Researchers tend to agree trust is made of 3 things. Some people say 4, but this model I think makes more sense to most of us. It is competence, that you're capable of doing what you are expected to do. So you're an accountant, you can actually file my taxes for me. The second is honesty, so that you're truthful or have integrity. And then the third is benevolence. That you have other people's best interests at heart. And here's what's interesting: they're not all equally valued. We value honesty above competence because a breach in honesty is a much bigger deal. But a breach in benevolence is actually even bigger. So if you found out that your doctor was getting kickbacks for giving you surgery, you'd be in shambles. Right? Like, that would be one of these crazy situations where you wouldn't trust anything they said, even if they were being honest.

Yeah. And it's interesting because in the financial industry, we have what's called the fiduciary standard, which is a legal obligation for people who operate under that standard that they have to put the client's best interests first, ahead of their own. So that's by law for those who live under the fiduciary standard. So that really ties in with your benevolence here.

So essentially what we're seeing is that human beings value benevolence more than honesty, and honesty more than competence. The weird thing is that human beings tend to lead with competence. So if you're in the financial industry, you say, oh, I've gotten X returns year after year for the past X years, whatever it is. And that demonstrates competence. But that's very different than me saying, Steve, I know that all the money you've earned is about creating a stable future for you and your family, that you need to be safe and still want to live a fantastic life in retirement. And that's what I'm here for. If you ever have any questions day or night, here's my number. I might not always have the answers, but we'll figure it out. And whatever it is that's important to you, That's what we're going to plan around so that you can actually live the life that you want. That feels very different than leading with confidence, right? Because I'm leading with benevolence. Now, here's what's interesting. I can lead with competence and go, Steve of the Green Bay area who has 3 children and, you know, like I can very competently bring all that stuff up. But if the context is off, If I'm not benevolent in nature, then it might even come off as creepy that I remember those things.

Yeah. And I think what's interesting here too is a lot of people do lead with competence and talk about, I've got this designation or that designation, or I've got X numbers of years of experience, so on and so forth. But the reality, that's just table stakes. Clients assume that you have competence, otherwise they wouldn't be talking to you. So if you don't have that, you're not even in the game here. And so then it becomes about the trust and it becomes about the benevolence. Do you have my best interests at heart here? And I think the latter two are the harder ones to demonstrate early in the relationship, to demonstrate that I'm honest, to demonstrate that I have your best interests in mind. I think that's where sometimes it gets difficult.

I agree. Honesty can be something that takes time to build status for. You can enjoy a halo effect, which is— Steve, let's assume you trust me to some degree. If I go, "Oh, you have to meet Shannon. Shannon is the most trustworthy person I know, or the best person," suddenly there's a transfer, like this halo effect, that you're willing to believe Shannon now to a high degree. So there are shortcuts to that kind of behavior. I think the hardest thing to do is to continuously demonstrate benevolence. Competence can be easy. It's, you know, oh, I've cooked at the White House. Great, then I trust that you know how to make me a grilled cheese, right? Like, it's— there are easy signals for that. I think that the benevolence is something that just needs to be there consistently.

All right, let's talk about the third part of your influence equation here, which is community. And I love this one as well as the other two. And so let's just talk about what gives people a feeling of a sense of community or a sense of belonging.

I think that this is one of these kind of wild things about us as people is that if we look, all those great predictors of longevity and success is this idea of belonging, right? For human beings, there's virtually nothing more important, right? We say, oh yeah, Maslow's higher orders of needs. First it's food and shelter. But to fit in, people do just about anything from starving themselves to, you know, dressing differently and all this stuff. And in fact, in our society, the greatest punishments we have are removing people from the group. It's solitary confinement or prison or exile, right? It's saying you can't be one of us anymore. So I don't think we pay attention to how important it is to give people a sense of belonging. And when researchers looked at this, they realized there isn't a thing called community. There's a feeling called community. It's that you feel that you belong. Because Steve, I can invite you, give you a title and all these things, and you can feel isolated still. Your belonging is a factor of feeling. And so when researchers McMillan and Chavez took a look at this, they found that there's kind of these 4 characteristics. The first is that there's a clear membership, right? So people are on the inside and people are on the outside. So in your industry, you can have membership probably through certificates or joining groups or having status, right? But then there's also membership that's because you all speak the same jargon, language that I don't know. If you start talking about stuff in financial services that's inside baseball, I'd be completely lost. But that's kind of like a cue that you're on the inside. So The question often more is how do you make your customers feel like they belong? So they want to stick around longer. And that's by potentially even creating a title or status to the community that you're trying to grow. So what I did was I created a group called The Influencers. I could have just had dinner parties, but the fact that I titled it and made a clear boundary between people who are dinner guests and not suddenly makes people feel like they're on the inside. Especially if there's an initiation process. I'll give you an example. Have you ever heard of the Navy SEALs?

Of course.

Yeah, probably one of the hardest membership processes for any group in the world, right? But when people make it through the elimination process, right, Hell Week, and then through what's called BUD/S, which is the Basic Underwater Demolitions Training, I think is the name, then they're on the inside. They're part of a brotherhood. And if we want people to feel a sense of belonging, We kind of want to create a boundary. It might be artificial, but just to make them feel like they're on the inside. The second is influence. In a community, influence flows two ways. So I have an effect on you, you have an effect on me. It's why Instagram is a really bad place for community, because Instagram— Taylor Swift doesn't care what people say on her page, on her posts, right? There's so many. That there's only one directional influence. People aren't connected to each other. The third is that there's an alignment between what people actually care to accomplish. If your community is about having a stable financial future, then it wouldn't make sense for high-stakes gamblers to probably be part of it, because their high-risk mentality probably won't be a good fit for the group. And so we have to be really clear, why is it that people are participating? People participate in religious groups because it's aligned with their religious beliefs. You might join the Freemasons because you care about design, development, all these things. And then the last thing is that you have a shared history or values. And what I find really amusing is that the shared history doesn't even have to be real. Like, you could have people who are huge fans of Star Wars. That's completely made up. It's not real, but people can feel a sense of belonging with other fans. So when you look at, okay, if we're going to create a sense of belonging with our customers, first of all, is there some kind of experience that we can invite them to? So that way there's people on the inside and those who are on the outside. Are they connecting with each other so that's shared, so that they can influence one another and you can influence them? Is it aligned with what you're actually trying to accomplish so that you're all heading in the same direction? And are your values in line? And that's really the beginnings of a community. And as long as you do that consistently and people keep supporting each other in those relationships, then people want to stick around.

And I've been advocating to advisors for many, many years now to try and create communities with their clients. And so I'd love to get your thought on this. The, the question is Let's say I'm a financial advisor and I've got 300 clients that I work with. One community would be 300 clients and the community is your clients of ours. So that's like the outer circle, let's say. And then maybe we create a concentric circle inside of that where, yes, you're part of our client community. Now we've got a subset of that where You are clients of ours, but you love to drink wine. So we've got a separate community for our wine drinkers. Maybe we've got another community of people that love outdoor adventure. So would you advocate creating smaller sub-communities within the larger community? Does that get confusing?

What are your thoughts on that? So what I generally would suggest is you have one community and you have offshoot events. And the reason is that creating sub-communities is going to be difficult to maintain. Now, that might work well if it's the women's group within your group, right? But most subgroups don't self-identify enough to make it a committed community. Like, the longevity on it's really hard. And the question is, How much are you even bringing together your 300 people that it would justify having a consistent offshoot experience? So most people, when they have 300 clients, they might say, oh, we'll do our holiday party. Okay, that's fine, but it's going to be really hard to build community when it's an annual experience. Now, if you started doing quarterly or monthly or weekly get-togethers, first of all, they have to be worth people's time, but then you actually have a potential of really creating a sense of belonging. Because when you have that level of consistency, then real social ties begin to form between people. And when those social ties begin to exist and the relationships can exist without you, that's when you have a more meaningful sense of community.

So just to make sure I understand what you just said here, if we had 300 clients, you're saying basically we have one large community, which is you're all clients of our firm. And then we have some frequency of events. So maybe once a year we have this big annual client appreciation event. And then over the course of the year, we have more frequent events that might be special interests, offshoots of the larger group. And people can basically opt in to that and say, "Oh, I love wine. And so I'm going to go to your wine event." Someone else might say, "Oh, I love this hike that you've organized. So I'm going to go on the hike through the local park with a guide.

That's exactly it. I would add two additional factors. One is you want either some very consistent events at some specific headcount. So let's say 20, 30, 50 people, whatever it is. With 350 people is really tough. So I recommend much smaller, probably somewhere around 10, 12, even 6. Now the way that I'd probably do it is one of two ways. Either I consistently run this experience for 12 people and then have some quarterly type of reunion where everybody's invited back. Or I'd have an initiation event. So every 3 months, the new clients are all invited to this one specific night or experience. They're initiated into the group, not through some like cult-like initiation. It could be a games night, it could be a hike, it could be whatever it is. But that's their welcoming where they get to meet a few of the new people. They all become kind of like this group and once they've done it then they're part of the community and they can participate in the reunion events or see the list of, you know, you can opt to have your name and title and services so that the community can support each other and like they can connect with each other and all that kind of stuff. So I think that an initiation process is really healthy, it doesn't have to be weird or crazy difficult like a sorority or fraternity and or a consistent small number of people that then comes together as a larger group every so often.

Well, John, I know we have just barely scratched the surface here of the work that you're doing and what you've put in the book. And I think I mentioned to you that I read your book, and as I highlighted it, I have it on Kindle, and I had highlighted like 12,000 words in your book.

So that is insanity.

Yeah, it is. And that's a great sign of how much great nuggets I found in there. So in the— just the few brief minutes that we have left here, tell me a little bit about the book. Is there anything that you want to share from the book that we haven't talked about yet? And what's the best way for folks to get in touch with you?

So the book is barely about me and the dinners or anything like that. It mostly tells stories of ultra interesting and often very successful people throughout, uh, history, ranging from the origins of Weight Watchers and how real estate company was able to make a fortune in the bust of 2008 when everybody was getting foreclosed on. They were selling their units for 2.5 times market value, all because of understanding this idea of human connection, trust, and belonging. And so it's highly actionable. Everything that's in the book has been put to the test to actually make sure that it works and it's backed by science. And you'll get to hear about the craziest art heist in history. And it, like, I mean, it's insane. So I'm super proud of it. I think it's really useful. And, uh, I'm also really proud of the fact it's a New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal Book of the Month. It premiered at number 2 on the Wall Street Journal's list and is now, I found out, being translated into its 5th language. So that's super cool.

Yeah, that is fantastic, and congratulations. And as you know, I'm a huge fan of you and the the work that you're doing and what you put in the book. So definitely encourage all the folks listening to this to pick up a copy. So Jon, what's the best way for folks to connect with you? Are you on social media?

My name is Jon Levy, J-O-N L-E-V-Y as in Victor, Y as in yellow. And my handle everywhere is @JonLevyTLB, T like Thomas, L like lion, B like boy. So reach out. Also, if you're looking for fun games to play with your community members or your family or whatever it is, There are tons that we created and are available for free download on my website because all we really want is for people to connect and build meaningful relationships.

Sounds great. Well, John, I appreciate you being on the show today.

Thanks so much for having me.

My key takeaway from my conversation with John Levy is to understand that influence is a byproduct of who we are connected to, how much they trust us in that capacity, and the sense of community that we share. And by keeping this in mind, we can build deeper, richer communities with our clients and potential clients in such a way that benefits everyone. All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care. And be safe.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.